Treatments for Schizophrenia:

Introduction & Major Tranquilisers:

Before the introduction of phenoziathines there was no effective treatment and long-stay wards were very unpleasant.

Patients often required physical restraints such as straight-jackets and padded cells - since the 1950's, the widespread use of antipsychotics drugs have allowed schizophrenics to be treated in a more humane way - drug therapies have revolutionalised the treatment of psychotic disorders as they've reduced amount of time patients spend in hopsitals.

Major tranquilizers were first introduced to calm patients down before surgery - then the intro of anti-psychotics like Phenozthines made the disturbing symptoms of schizophrenia less distrubing.

They're useful for the positive symptoms & they work by blocking the D2 receptor for dopamine.

Although been criticised as they don't affect the negative symptoms, also bad side effects to the drug i.e. Parkinson-like side effects "tardive dyskinesie" which is irreversible - other side effects like inner restlessness.

Also, some schizophrenics have to be given other drugs to counteract the side effects & these occur in up to 30% patients that take Phenoziathines.

1 of 3

Research Evidence & CBT:

Sane (2007) stated that antipsychotics reduce the positive symptoms in 80% of patients - may reduce the positive symptoms but it does not cure schizophrenia or its underlying cause - if you stop taking these drugs, symptoms will reappear meaning these behavioural therapies need improving.

CBT: Token Economies - A more recent discovery is cognitive behavioural therapies (CBT) - Incoherent speech and muteness can be a problem as Michembaum found an improvement in coherent speech using token economies and social reinforcementt groups compared to controls.

He found an improvement in speech when using the methods of token economies, although some criticised his research as the coherent speech was only automaton, it wasn't clear utterances/sentences - it only demand for objects or items of food.

Another CBT that looked into hallucinations was carried out - use of punishments such as electric shock and white noise have been used to reduce halluncinations in schizophrenics.

Findings in studies indicate some reduction in frequency, duration and intensity of the halluncations - found to be usccessful.

Although, doesn't help to try and find the underlying cause - only a small no. of patients willing to carry out therapies like this one. success is limited & lacks controls.

2 of 3

CBT: Delusions & Conclusion:

Trying to find ways of curing delusions - (another positive symptom) Watts et al (1973) - carried out a study on 3 patients - asked them to recall facts about their most frequent delusion. Once participants had recalled info about their delusion, it stopped them from haivng another one.

Treating delusions is a helpful method of reducing the disturbing symptoms of the disorder - although this type of CBT doesn't address the disorder, only focuses on tackling the symptom - also as the sample size of 3 is small, difficult to generalise findings.

Conclusion

To conclude, behavioural therapies like anti-psychotics are good at combating the positive symptoms of schizoprenia but poor at relieving the patient of negative symptoms.

Furthermore, side effects from antipsychotics likePhenoziathines are extremely dangerous & some patients even have to take more drugs to counter-act them.

Also, CBT therapies are a relatively new treatment so may still need improvements. Attempts have been made to reduce the symptoms of schizophrenia such as hallucinations, delusions & distrubance of speech but only to some success: